Author Archives: Aleh Cherp

About Aleh Cherp

Aleh Cherp is a professor at Central European University and Lund University. He researchers energy and environment and coordinates MESPOM, a Masters course operated by six Universities.

Essential software for academic work on Mac: 2021 update

Posted on June 12, 2021 by Aleh Cherp

It’s been seven years since I listed 25 apps essential for academic work on Mac. This list has proven to be very popular and relatively stable, but over the years I dropped or significantly reduced using 13 of these applications and … Continue reading →

Posted in Automation, Bibliographies, Collaboration, Files, Graphics, Notes, Presentations, Projects, Tasks, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Notion for academic collaboration

Posted on March 27, 2021 by Aleh Cherp

Notion is a new knowledge management platform that can potentially revolutionise academic collaboration. It allows collaborating editing and organising the content into shared ‘databases’ such as publications, projects, classes, etc. Continue reading →

Posted in Collaboration | Tagged | 2 Comments

ReadCube Papers Beta – organising references

Posted on May 4, 2020 by Aleh Cherp

ReadCube Papers is a promising replacement for the best Mac reference and pdf organiser – Papers – that is sadly no longer supported. Also new Papers has a great interface and many feature of the old app it still needs a lot of work to catch up with the expectations. Continue reading →

Posted in Bibliographies, Writing | Tagged , | 22 Comments

Asana for academic collaboration

Posted on April 26, 2020 by Aleh Cherp

All my projects are in collaboration with other researchers. In the last year, I’ve been working with a tool that has revolutionised this collaboration: Asana. By now we’ve completed 3 publications and 3 research funding applications using Asana and currently working … Continue reading →

Posted in Collaboration, Writing | Tagged | 7 Comments

TaskPaper 3

Posted on May 23, 2016 by Aleh Cherp

I have recently completed a large grant proposal and several research manuscripts. Such sticky projects involve hundreds of details that need to be remembered: “reformat table 3”, “find the page number in reference 76”, “ask someone to rework figure 5”, “read an article … Continue reading →

Posted in Projects, Tasks, Workflows | Tagged | 13 Comments

Citing organisations in Papers 3.0

Posted on April 25, 2016 by Aleh Cherp

Organisations, rather than people, often co-author reports and other materials which should be cited and referenced in scientific work. After many trials and errors, I have finally resolved how to elegantly cite organisations with long names and short acronyms using Papers 3, my pdf … Continue reading →

Posted in Bibliographies, Writing | Tagged | 17 Comments

BusyContacts and academic networking

Posted on February 14, 2015 by Aleh Cherp

Three months ago, I started using beta-version of BusyContacts, which a reader suggested in a comment to the post on organising academic contacts. Last week this software (developed by the maker of my favorite BusyCal) released the first official version. I have really enjoyed BusyContacts, … Continue reading →

Posted in Contacts | Tagged , | 14 Comments

Paperless scholarship with pen and paper

Posted on February 2, 2015 by Aleh Cherp

There has been a paradoxical shift in my classroom and my own habits. The students have stopped asking for printed handouts but at the same time they started to take their own notes with pen and paper. Similarly, I use more pen and paper while at the … Continue reading →

Posted in Notes | 6 Comments

Papers 3 library searchable by Spotlight

Posted on January 24, 2015 by Aleh Cherp

Since my first post about Papers 3, a reference and pdf-file management software, it has significantly matured to become one of if not the best in the field. The most recent addition (version 3.2.6) has been to make a Papers 3 library indexable … Continue reading →

Posted in Bibliographies, Files | Tagged , | 40 Comments

FoxTrot Professional Search

Posted on December 26, 2014 by Aleh Cherp

I had been trying FoxTrot Professional Search for several months before eventually deciding to buy the professional version. My initial motivation was to find a tool that could search inside Papers3 library, but I have discovered that the appeal of FoxTrot is … Continue reading →

Posted in Files, Tags and folders | Tagged , | 22 Comments